by King, R. L.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Stone rose. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a bus to meet.”
As he turned to leave, Casner spoke. “Dr. Stone?”
Stone stopped without turning back. “Yes?”
Casner didn’t respond for several seconds. “You know—I still want to figure out how to explain this all away. To pretend it didn’t happen the way it did. To make some kind of sense out of it. Truth is, as time goes by, I probably will do that. But right now, I want to say—thanks. Because right now, I still believe it happened. And that maybe if you hadn’t come down here looking for your friend, it would still be happening. And none of us could have done a fucking thing about it.”
Stone shrugged. “You’d have found a way, Lieutenant. You wouldn’t have had a choice.”
“Maybe. But even so—thanks.”
Stone nodded and left the office.
Chapter Fifty
Verity Thayer’s eyes grew wide as she listened to the news reports on the radio from the back seat of Stone’s BMW. The newscaster was talking about the aftermath and the cleanup efforts still going on downtown after what was being referred to as the “Ojai Valley Massacre.”
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “You weren’t kidding. This was huge.”
Stone nodded. “You’re lucky you missed it. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wished you were there.”
They were driving back to Lopez’s house from the bus station in Ventura, where Verity had arrived earlier after returning home from her retreat and getting Stone’s phone message the previous night. She nodded. “Yeah, I might have been able to help.” She looked at Jason, who was in the shotgun seat. “Nice cast, by the way. You gonna let me sign it?”
He glared at her, but it didn’t have much fire behind it. “Yeah, you can sign it—if you wait on me back at Stan’s. I’m an invalid now, you know.”
She snorted. “Yeah, some invalid. I’ll cook for you, but no way am I giving you sponge baths.” Her expression grew more serious. “You guys all could have been killed. How’s Stan doing?”
“He’s all right,” Stone said. “Quite a few bumps and bruises, some fractured ribs, and a concussion—he’s on medical leave for a few days, but he’ll be fine.”
“He was damned lucky,” Jason said. “If he hadn’t been fast enough to deflect himself a little when he got tossed into that tree, he’d be dead.”
Verity sighed. “Well, since I missed all the excitement, I guess the least I can do is stick around for a few days and help you guys out till Stan’s up and around, especially since Dr. Stone’s gonna have to go back home for his classes soon. I already cleared it with Marta at the restaurant.”
“Well,” Jason said, “I’m not gonna say no to some of your cooking, given that between Stan, Al, and me we might be able to boil water. And that’s if Stan’s doing the cooking.”
They reached Lopez’s house and headed inside, Verity carrying her bag. Stone took her aside as Jason went on ahead. “Verity, there’s someone else here—someone I’d like you to meet.”
She looked puzzled. “Uh—sure. Who?”
“Another practitioner we met down here. She’s got—a very different approach to mine. I want to see how the two of you get on. Talk with her for a while, and let me know what you think.”
Verity still looked confused, but she’d been studying under Stone long enough to know not to ask too many questions until she’d done what he asked. She nodded and went on inside.
Stone paused inside the door. He’d been thinking about this for a while now, in the back of his mind, and after all of them had recovered as much as they were going to from the events of the last few days, he’d found some time last night to discuss it with Edna. She’d been hesitant at first, protesting that she was too old and out of practice to have anything of value to offer, but Stone had asked her to consider the possibility, and she’d agreed to at least talk with Verity.
It might not work out—there were many ways it could go wrong. Verity might not like Edna, or vice versa, though he suspected the older woman’s irascible kindness and Verity’s quick-witted cynicism would quickly find common ground. In a way, Stone felt as if he was stepping away from a responsibility, but he also felt like he wasn’t doing Verity any favors if he didn’t give her access to resources that were more in line with her talents. His apprentice was capable with everything he’d given her, though she didn’t have the patience for the bits that involved a large amount of detailed study. What she excelled at, though, was healing magic, both physical and mental. He’d noticed it from the beginning of her time studying with him, and had done his best to incorporate it into her training. She had taken to it like she was born for it, while he, who had never spent much time on anything beyond a few simple healing spells, had improved in teaching her but struggled with the sort of empathic connection needed to truly master it.
He smiled a bit, wryly; Edna was probably right: he was too self-centered and arrogant to be more than passably good at other-centered magic like healing. He was a scholar and an innovator: Verity had the latter, but balked at the former. She would probably flourish under Edna’s more organic, less book-focused tutelage, if the old woman would agree to take her on. It might be good for Edna, too: mages tended to live a fair bit longer than mundanes (if their work didn’t kill them), which meant that Edna, despite her protests about being “old,” probably wasn’t much more than middle-aged for a magical practitioner. Stone believed the power she’d commanded when she was younger would come back to her in spades if she had to focus it to train someone else.
He sighed again, and reminded himself that he wasn’t passing Verity off to a new master, but simply offering her the equivalent of a “visiting semester” where she could learn from another teacher with different skills. And if she didn’t want to do it, that was fine, too. He was just glad that things had worked out so he could make the offer.
Chapter Fifty-One
It was late the next afternoon when Jason knocked on the door of Stone’s bedroom. “Al? Got a minute?”
“Come on in,” Stone said, turning away from his packing. He planned to leave the next morning, which would give him a few days to rest at home before starting his new quarter at Stanford, and wanted to get the packing done before all of them went out for one final dinner together that evening.
Jason came in and sat down in the chair by the window without saying anything.
“How’s the arm?” Stone asked.
He shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt much. Shouldn’t have to wear this thing for long—it’s not a bad break.”
Stone nodded. “What can I do for you?”
Jason hesitated, looking like he wasn’t sure how to say what he had come to say. Finally, he started: “I talked to V this afternoon.”
“Yes?”
“She and Edna are getting along great. She told me you want her to come down here and study with her for a while.”
“Yes.”
“And she says she’s gonna do it.”
“Yes,” Stone said again.
Jason took a breath. “I think it’s a good idea,” he said. “I guess she’s gonna live with Edna out there at her place by the Hot Springs. I think she might be happy to come back down here for a while. I think she’s missed it.”
Stone sat down on the edge of the bed and fixed Jason with a probing gaze. “Jason, you didn’t come in here to talk about Verity, did you?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“What, then?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few days,” he said after a pause.
“About—?”
“Life. What I want to do with myself. That whole thing with Faces kidnapping me spooked me, but it also got me thinking. I don’t want to go through life being a battery. That’s not what I’m about. I need to be doing things, not just—you know—m
aking it easier for other people to do them.” He looked down into his lap. “Does that make any sense?”
Stone nodded. “Of course it does. It can’t have been easy for you, spending so much time with Verity and me. I understand that now. I guess I didn’t really see it before, but your outburst in the car the other night didn’t go unheard.” He paused. “So what do you want to do?”
“I’ve been talking to Stan. I can’t really go back to the Academy—I think that ship has sailed, and it doesn’t make sense to try to make it work. But there is something else I can do.”
“What’s that?”
“I can get my PI license and become a private investigator.”
Stone raised an eyebrow. “You mean following cheating spouses around and investigating insurance claims?”
“That’s some of it,” he admitted, “but there’s a lot more than that. I can get my firearm carry permit, maybe set up my own little business.” He sighed. “Al, all my life I dreamed of being a cop like my dad. I never even considered that it wouldn’t work out for me. I can’t go through life being an assistant manager at a restaurant—or a gas pump for a guy who can throw lightning bolts with his brain.”
“Jason—”
Jason held up his hands. “No, that didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean it that way. It felt good to be able to help out. I think that’s why I got it back there at the end—because I really did want to help. I wasn’t conflicted about it anymore. And I don’t want to stop doing it forever. But I need to get my head on straight and figure out what I want to do. Kinda like V does, you know?”
Stone nodded. “So how are you going to do this? When will you start?”
He took a deep breath. “That’s the hard part. That’s why I was talking to Stan. It takes classes, and also a lot of hours of working under a licensed PI, or the equivalent. My time at the Academy will count toward it, but Stan said he can talk to some friends and see about putting in a good word.”
“I see,” Stone said softly. “So what you’re telling me is that you’ve decided to remain here.”
“Yeah. At least for a while.” He shook his head. “Stan said I could stay at his place for not too much rent, since he’s got the extra bedrooms. The apartment up north is month-to-month, so I wouldn’t lose too much there. And Marta—I think she’ll understand. I think she’s been expecting me to do something like this for a long time.” He picked up a magazine from a nearby table and leafed through it. “Having V down here was kind of the final thing that made me decide to go for it. That way I can kinda look out for her too, you know?”
“And she, you,” Stone said with a small, faraway smile. “Jason, what can I say? I wish you the best of luck, of course I do. I hope you’ll make it back up to the Bay Area every now and then—both of you, in fact.”
Jason grinned. “Hey, you’re not getting rid of us that easily, Al. Besides—once I get my license and V finishes training with Edna, what’s to say I can’t come back up there and start my agency? And if I get any cases that seem like they’re on your side of the street, maybe we can get together and play Ghostbusters again.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Stone said.
He stood up, still grinning. “Count on it.” He paused, then looked hard at Stone. “You take care of yourself, Al. You’re not gonna have us around to look after you and remind you to take time for boring stuff like food and sleep.”
Stone raised an eyebrow. “I managed before I met you, Jason. I think I’ll be all right.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
The Ojai cemetery was small, rustic, and very beautiful: rather than the typical design of a vast lawn and ordered rows of headstones, its haphazard randomness reminded Stone a bit of an English garden. Dotted by old trees, bounded by a low rock wall, and bisected by a single-lane road, it was nearly deserted at this hour of the morning.
Stone didn’t hurry as he walked through, glancing at the headstones here and there as he went. Many of them were old, at least by American standards (Stone, who’d grown up in and around London, had his own ideas about what constituted ‘old’), some no more than planks of wood with inscriptions so faint as to be illegible. A few of them sported flowers, some faded and brittle, some so fresh they must have been placed within the last day or two.
There were also several fresh graves, their mounded piles of dirt and lack of headstones paying silent testament to the horrors that had visited this small, peaceful town over the last few days. Stone headed toward one of these, his hair and his black overcoat whipping gently in the late-summer breeze.
He’d made a point of reading the local papers when they came out: there was no official explanation for what had happened. The press, both local and wider, treated the incidents as some sort of aberration—something in the water, perhaps, or in the air, or maybe some kind of bizarre sickness that had flashed through the town and left murder in its wake. None of the explanations made any sense, and Stone didn’t think they fooled anyone; even Casner had been quoted in a couple places as being mystified about what had caused the horrors, though he did say he was confident that they were over now and that the citizens of the town could rest easy. Nobody believed that either, even though it was true. Stone supposed it would take a lot of time before people around here went back to leaving their doors unlocked and passing strangers on the street without suspicion.
There was no mention in any of the newspapers about the crater in the forest off a remote fire road a few miles from Creek Road. Stone wondered how long it would take anyone to even find it, or if the ley line in the area would return it to its normal healthy state now that the tablets had been vaporized along with the tree.
Along with Carly.
The grave he was looking for was on the far side of the cemetery, near the back. Like the other new ones it had no headstone, but he had checked with the authorities and been given the location. So many people had died that they were backed up on setting up niceties like headstones. They didn’t even have room for all the bodies; the families of many of the victims would have to settle for final resting places in other nearby cities.
Stone raised the large bouquet of flowers, brightly colored in reds, oranges, and yellows, and placed it on the grave. Others were already there: a fading wreath that read Beloved Daughter, another smaller one that included a photograph enclosed in plastic to keep it safe from the elements. He crouched down, looking into the merry brown eyes of a woman he’d only had the chance to know a couple days, and thought about what might have been.
“Goodbye, Lindsey,” he said softly, and rose again.
“I feel terrible that I ever suspected you of anything,” said a gentle voice behind him.
He turned to see Suzanne Washburn standing there, dressed as usual in a bohemian-chic ensemble topped with a colorful headscarf. Her eyes were subdued, her face aged five years since he had last seen her only a short time ago.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said softly. “In truth, I didn’t expect to see anyone this early.”
“I came to visit Karen,” she said, nodding at another nearby unmarked grave awash in a riot of colorful arrangements. “It’s really a shame that it’s taking them so long to get the markers up.”
“They’ve been a bit busy.”
For a while she only stared at her feet, but then her eyes came up to meet his. “You stopped it, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “It’s over. I didn’t do it alone, though. Mostly you can thank your friend Carly.”
“Carly...” she whispered. “She’s—gone, isn’t she?”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to.
“I hope she found some peace,” she said at last. “I always liked Carly, but I always felt like there were things going on in her life that the rest of us would never understand.”
“I think that’s true of all of us,” Stone said.
“I guess it is at that,” she agreed. She paused, looking out over the cemetery. A white hearse was coming in, followed by a half-dozen cars. She watched them silently for several moments, then turned back to him. “I don’t want to intrude, Dr. Stone. I’ll let you go. I just wanted to—” She spread her hands as if to say, I don’t know what I wanted.
He thought he knew what she meant, even if she didn’t. “I understand. Thank you, Mrs. Washburn.”
He paused for several moments, taking in the area as if he were committing it to memory. Then he nodded farewell to her and started back toward the small parking area where he’d left the BMW, all packed up and ready to go.
He’d already said his goodbyes that morning to Lopez, Jason, Edna, and Verity. Jason and Verity would be returning to the Bay Area in the next few days to finish their affairs and pack their stuff, but this morning had been no less of a farewell.
He took a last look at Lindsey’s grave, and thought about Carly Rodriguez. He thought about what Suzanne had just said, and the last expression on Carly’s face.
All was not yet well in this small town, but he thought it was, at least, in the process of getting there. And that would have to be enough for now.
Acknowledgements
For some of these, I should just cut and paste from the previous books, because they’re almost always going to include the same cast of characters: Dan, my ever-understanding spouse, for inspiration and support; John Helfers, my editor, for making my stuff better (and for the great snarky comments he puts in the manuscript); Mike Brodu, my Picky Beta Reader (you should see the dozens of pages worth of discussions we got into about bits of this book); and Glendon at Streetlight Graphics for another fantastic cover.
Thanks also to Mike Murphy, a longtime friend, gaming buddy, and retired California law enforcement officer, who gave me some pointers about the cops and their behavior.